In his series titled “Obstructions” which has recently earned him the Nam June Paik Award,
Ali Kazma has entered spaces of production, maintenance and repair that are often not
visible in our everyday life and has tried to understand the human instinct to construct,
transform and protect oneself and the world around him; together with the meaning of this
process in the context of human nature. In videos he has shot in factories, workshops, repair
clinics, slaughterhouses, kitchens and artist’s studios, he has recorded striking images of the
efforts of people dedicated to production and imposing order, imbued with the will to stop,
or at least slow down the process of dissolution. In his work titled “Today”, (realised for the
“Istanbul Pedestrian Exhibitions 2: Tünel–Karaköy” 2005) which formed the basis for the
“Obstructions” series, he recorded 32 short videos depicting the often unnoticed micro-
activities taking place within the everyday routine of the public space the exhibition was
located in; the production processes of consumption-oriented products and even artistic
works; the maintenance and repair works undertaken in the area; and in brief, every single
type of activity related to physical and social human requirements, and included among
them a notary’s clerk act of stamping official documents with surprising speed and incredible
dexterity.

In “Clerk”, Ali Kazma revisits the notary public in “Today”. Instead of the production and
work areas predominant in the general structure of “Obstructions”, Kazma here uses a
professional studio and trains his camera on the hand of the notary’s clerk, which grants
approval with each stamping of a document.

“Clerk” focuses on the performance the hand repeats mechanically. As the stamp is
repeatedly brought down, the significance of the owner of the hand is reduced with each
blow. As the hand, the symbol of the impartiality and justice with its supra-identity status
unceasingly raises and lowers the circuit-breaker of the institutional approval machine, it
echoes the drone of the functioning of institutional order.

[Emre Baykal, written 2011 for the Arter Group Show Second Exhibition.]